England's Chris Cracknell talks sevens

Many of us will spend the next month complaining about the days getting shorter, watching John Lewis adverts and piling on the winter pounds, but for the top Sevens players in the world it involves two weeks in Australia, a week in Dubai and a week in South Africa. Not that I’m bitter but I do hear it’s raining on the Gold Coast.

As we approach the first weekend of the HSBC Sevens World Series, I got in touch with England Sevens stalwart Chris Cracknell to get the inside track out in Australia as well as hearing a few of his opinions on what to expect this series.

Chris Cracknell in action

I ask Chris what the team will work on in the week’s build up to a tournament – “mainly ironing things out on the rugby pitch”.  There is also a focus on the teams that England will face in the pool stage – working on ways in which they can overcome these initial challenges. “We are fortunate that, now we are full time, a lot of the hard graft has been done. This means we can concentrate on specific areas for that week and teams we will meet in the pool stages.” For this tournament England are up against Scotland, Tonga and Wales, who Chris picks out as one to watch this year. “The Wales side are now also full time and will be a tough side to beat”.

I am keen to see who Chris feels may cause a few upsets in the 2011/2012 series. “Spain, who will only be participating in certain tournaments have shown in the summer how good they are”. He is also among the many, including myself, who feel that Portugal could really turn some heads this year. They pipped England to the FIRA European Sevens Grand Prix Series title over the summer and have some extremely quality players. Chris doesn’t want to write anyone off though and feels that we all may know a bit more about the teams after this weekend.

Check out the IRB's top seven tries from the Adelaide sevens last year, including a cheeky one from England's Matt Turner.

I am keen to find out where Chris most enjoys playing on the circuit. “Wellington is amazing and playing in NZ is great because it’s a rugby mad community and they really capture the party atmosphere of 7s”. Playing in front of the home fans at Twickenham also is very special for Chris and he tells me that the support is always “mind blowing”.

There is a lot of buzz about sevens at the moment with its inclusion in the 2014 Commonwealth games in Glasgow and the 2016 Olympics, and although Chris doesn’t think he will be in the picture in 5 years’ time he is happy to see the profile growing year on year. “I’d love more than anything to be there (Rio, 2016), but that will be for the younger talented generation coming through!”

We hope to catch up with Chris later on in the series, which starts this Friday – best of luck to the team out there!

Andy